Florida school saves big and goes green—"with solar power

Tampa Bay Solar was the leader on a major solar project at the Manatee School for the Arts, one of the most significant rooftop solar projects ever completed at a Florida school, with panels installed across the school�s expansive campus.

By Tony Kryzanowski

After spending 22 years in the United States military as a U.S. Navy SEAL—including several tours in Iraq—Steve Rutherford was looking for an opportunity where he could parlay his skills and training into a successful business venture. He found it in Florida’s renewable power industry.

Now CEO of Tampa Bay Solar, at the time of his departure from the military in 2011 Rutherford had a Masters degree in Physics and training in how both conventional and alternative energy systems functioned. He even had experience with off-grid power use in active combat zones during deployment in Afghanistan.

The renewable power industry had captured less than one percent of the market in many jurisdictions across America at that time. So in 2012, he launched Tampa Bay Solar, recognizing Florida as one of America’s sunniest destinations with significant growth potential in the emerging renewable power market.

Over the past decade-and-a-half, a great deal of the company’s focus has been on solar power systems, specifically commercial and residential rooftop solar installations. To date, between 60 to 70 percent of their projects have been rooftop residential, with the remainder being commercial. They also have experience with carport and ground mounted systems.

The company is about to energize its largest rooftop solar array project to date and one of the largest in the entire state of Florida—it’s located at the Manatee School of the Arts, a tuition-free, arts-infused, public charter K-12 school focusing on both the arts and academics in Palmetto, Florida, 40 miles south of Tampa, on the Gulf Coast of the state. It has one notable attraction from a solar power development perspective—plenty of available rooftop space.

Its new 2 megawatt (MW) rooftop array consists of about 3,200 solar panels spread over eight buildings and will provide the school with 90 percent of its power needs. They expect to save about $200,000 in energy costs per year and the array will provide power to the campus for at least 25 years.

The new 2-megawatt (MW) rooftop array at the Manatee School of the Arts in Palmetto, Florida, consists of 3,200 solar panels spread over eight buildings and will provide the school with 90 percent of its power needs.

“Our past projects had all been on single rooftops,” says Rutherford, “so this one was a bit more complex because we were dealing with so many different buildings, interconnections, underground runs, different meters, different size systems, and different permitting for each building.”

He adds that it was like doing eight separate commercial jobs to achieve that total 2 MW of power generation, combining everything that they had learned over the years from other projects into this one location.

The school is so excited about its imminent energy savings, providing them with the opportunity to use the money to enhance educational resources for staff and students, that they have already decided to add another 50,000 square feet of rooftop solar on a new campus building.

This will offset 90 to 100 percent of their power needs, and Tampa Bay Solar intends to be among the bidders for that imminent expansion project. “We might be hanging around there for several more years,” says Rutherford.

Leveraging the value of what solar-generated power brings was critically important to the school, which describes itself as a “growing school with growing costs”. Its electricity bills were growing by roughly $100,000 per year.

	In addition to building the Manatee School of the Arts project, Tampa Bay Solar has also assisted with helping the school tap into all available state and federal tax incentives to minimize the cost of this approximate $4 million project, including the financial benefits of using domestic suppliers for system components wherever possible.

The partnership between the school and Tampa Bay Solar was rather serendipitous as a sales call to the school revealed that it was definitely in the market for rooftop solar and in the midst of a bidding process. Once they discovered Tampa Bay Solar’s experience in rooftop solar development in Florida, the company was encouraged to place a bid and were selected to deliver the project.

Notable past customers were the Tampa Florida Aquarium, City of Tampa, and the Dunedin City Hall.

“We also do start to finish,” Rutherford says. “The customer has one person to point the finger at—and that’s us. We have a design team that is outsourced. Usually we give them the parameters of what we want and they help us with the design and engineering. We make sure it meets our requirements and then take that stamped design from the engineer, through to permitting, and all the way to commissioning.”

In addition to building the Manatee School of the Arts project, Tampa Bay Solar has also assisted with helping the school tap into all available state and federal tax incentives to minimize the cost of this approximate $4 million project, including the financial benefits of using domestic suppliers for system components wherever possible. They also helped the customer establish the net metering process with the local public utility.

Tampa Bay Solar is about to energize its largest rooftop solar array project to date and one of the largest in the entire state of Florida—at the Manatee School of the Arts. The school has a notable attraction from a solar power development perspective—plenty of available rooftop space.

“This is a one-time investment that will bring huge long-term savings,” says Timothy McMurray, Chief Financial Officer of the school’s non-profit operator, Renaissance Arts and Education. “Instead of spending on energy bills, we can now spend more on what matters to our students.”

The Manatee School of the Arts owns the solar array. The power produced is wheeled to the local public utility, Florida Power & Light (FPL). The school’s power bill is calculated on a net-metering basis. Any excess power they produce during the day is wheeled to the utility and is credited to their account. They are still connected to the utility to draw conventional power, as needed.

As a school, having renewable solar power in their midst also provides a valuable learning opportunity to the students in how the technology to capture solar power actually works.

The project began in November 2024. Among the first tasks was to reach out to utility FPL to ensure that the energy produced by this solar array could be connected to the grid. Actual construction began in April 2025 with expected construction completion this October.

In terms of selecting the buildings to host the array, the primary goal was to choose buildings closest to the tie-in meter. But not all the buildings are in close proximity to each other and this was a consideration in the overall design of the project. The overall campus site on which the school is located is about 11 hectares.

“Seven of the buildings are in close proximity to each other and the eighth one is about a football field away,” says Rutherford. “So that was one of biggest challenges to install the underground conduit so that nothing was above ground.”

The ability of the roofs to support the solar array components was not an issue.

“A lot of people bring that up as a concern, but few people realize that solar panels add about three pounds per square foot to a roof,” says Rutherford, “and by dead load standards, that’s a very minimal amount of structure on a roof when you think about it. When you stand on a roof, you are 150 to 200 pounds per square foot. So the engineer did assess the roofs and he assessed them as fully capable.”

Florida is also notorious for its powerful storms that frequently generate hurricane-force winds. So obviously Tampa Bay Solar was required to comply with state building standards taking that into account.

“In that region, they are located in a 150 mile per hour plus region,” says Rutherford. “So the attachment system we used has withstood the test of time. We’ve been using that system for over 10 years now, and we have over 2,000 residential customers and none of those customers have lost a system, nor have any of our commercial customers.”

The REC Group supplied about 3,200 of their 640W M solar modules for this project, Enphase supplied its IQ8P-3P commercial micro-inverters, and IronRidge Solar Mounting & Racking supplied the racking system. Both the inverters and racking systems were manufactured in the U.S.

 Right now, Rutherford says that Tampa Bay Solar is experiencing a surge in business given the phasing out of federal government incentives related to the installation of renewable power expected by the end of 2025. He adds that what the market holds for next year is currently difficult to predict.

“I don’t have a crystal ball as to what 2026 is really going to look like overall, but I can tell you that as utility prices continue to rise, it is continuing to make solar more and more affordable, even if the tax credit is not there,” says Rutherford. “But solar developers still have to be able to raise their rates accordingly with inflation, tariffs, and other challenges that have come up to be able to meet the business requirement of maintaining and sustaining a company.”

Despite these challenges, he says that there continues to be significant opportunity for solar development in Florida, with solar being the only source of power in the state that does not have to be imported.

“It has taken more than 12 years for Florida to go from one percent to almost 5 percent penetration, so there is a lot more space to grow regarding solar in the state,” says Rutherford. “But I do anticipate that into next year that we are going to see a slowdown because the tax credit is not there. It makes the return on investment for the customer slightly longer.”

Q4 2025